LEADERS of Bury Grammar School have come up with a plan to boost the number of students enrolling.

They have applied to Bury Council for permission to build an extension to the girls’ school building where Bridge Street meets Tenterden Street.

The extension would have a 300-seater lecture theatre and courtyard on the ground floor, staff offices and a garden terrace on the first floor, and changing rooms for productions in the basement.

It is part of a £6 million project that has already seen the construction of kindergarten and will also include recreational and study facilities when further development plans are drawn up in the near future.

The ground floor would be linked to the existing school building, which would get a newly designed entrance.

An old toilet block and two classrooms facing on to Bridge Street would have to be demolished as part of the project.

The hope is that, if the council grants permission, student numbers will rise once work is finished within the next two years.

Girls’ school headteacher Mrs Bobby Georghiou said: “Our feeling was that we want top-class facilities to match our top-class teaching.

“We would like to provide our students with a social environment where they feel very comfortable in the hope that even more will enrol in the sixth form.

“The aim is to give them a taste of what university life is like by putting them in a similar educational environment to a university.

“Recently, we have had guest speakers like the physics professor, Brian Cox, who have to speak in classrooms.

“This facility will give them a tailor-made space to speak from and free up valuable teaching space in other areas of the school.”

The project would reduce the number of parking spaces at the back of the building from 320 to 287.

But the school has argued to the council that there will be enough for its staff. It has the equivalent of 248 full-time staff.

Money for the development was raised by donations from school supporters and from students holding a telephone appeals day.

In 2008, Heather Sellers, then a student at the school, undertook a sponsored swim of the Channel when she was aged 17. She donated part of the proceeds towards the school's extension project.